“…any food product that feels compelled to tell you it’s natural in all likelihood is not.”—-Michael Pollan

Thursday, August 15, 2013

DIAL M.W. FOR MURDER--A Really Good Bladder Press

It's been a long time since I wrote a chapter of my continuing, shaggy dog/pulp fiction/detective novel Dial M.W. for Murder, but the disappearance of Avril Cadavril has been haunting me, so I decided to find out what happened to her. Those who want to start from the beginning can go to my Compost Heap (in the left hand column) and read the previous nine chapters of Dial M.W. that lead up to this. Some babes worth looking at! I made a silly attempt at a recap in the first paragraph, but, as regular readers know, plot isn't the strong point anyway.

A HOSEMASTER OF WINE™ PULP FICTION CLASSIC

Chapter 10 A Really Good Bladder Press

Here it is Chapter Ten and I hadn’t had sex with a woman yet. Oh, there were plenty of babes around, they kept showing up at my door like horny Jehovah’s Witnesses asking me if I’d found Jesus, which I had, he was outside Home Depot waiting to get a paying gig. Only the first bombshell, Crystal Geyser, was dead, plugged by an unknown M.W. candidate in drag. Not Jancis Robinson, though he was still on my suspect list. The love of my life, Avril Cadavril, was missing, and every clue I had to her disappearance led down a blind alley. I was getting really tired of blind alleys. Just once I wanted to be led down a Wine Spectator alley, you know, an alley that’s supposedly blind but isn’t really. Only I might run into James Laube in that alley digging through dumpsters looking for his reputation. I’d also been instantly attracted to Mallory O’Lactic, though that may have been because she was wearing Avril’s bracelet, the one I’d given Avril, the one that had been left on my desk after Mallory, and the guy who’d thrown her unconscious into my office and minutes later clubbed me into a coma, had also vanished. And now I had yet another damsel in distress, Biola Dynamic, in my office, her slight lisp somehow sexy, every syllable sibilantly escaping her lips like the slow leak of hot air from Harvey Steiman, or the warning hiss of an angry snake, if there’s a difference, with an interesting story of being asked by some unnamed M.W.’s to kill Mallory O’Lactic. I needed a vacation. Two weeks in Avril, wet bar included, the HoseMaster bedroom—sweet.

While I was summarizing this so-called plot in my head,
Biola was killing the time looking at the photos on my desk. There aren’t that
many. I’m not really a sentimental guy. There’s my autographed photo of Rudy
Kurniawan, signed with his usual tagline, “Things go better with Koch.” And a
very rare and collectible photograph of Nicolas Joly with his mouth shut. But
Biola was staring at my photograph of Avril Cadavril.

“Who is this?” she wanted to know.

“That’s Savanna Samson, a former porn actress who makes
Brunello. Spends three years with wood. So does the wine,” I lied. “I met her
at a wine judging. Man, can she gargle.”

“No,” Biola said quietly, “who is she? I know her. I was
just in a limo with her. She’s beautiful, and she smells like Chuck Roast.
Chuck Roast, M.W. You know him?”

“Beefy guy?”

It seemed everyone who’d been in that limo had been in my
office the last couple of days. Crystal, Avril,

Avril Cadavril and Chuck Roast

Mallory, and now Biola. I
needed to find out who everyone was in that limo, and who’d rented it. But
there are more limousines in wine country than there are Republican winery
owners—both are hard to see through, but when you do, all you see is sex,
money, and soundproof glass to keep out the chattering of the 99 Percent. And I also needed to track down Tiny, find out
what he’d taken from Avril’s office when I’d found him there going through her
papers. Somehow, Tiny was in on all this. He’d do anything for money, and
anything else for Nacho Cheese Doritos. But I also needed to make sure that
Biola didn’t disappear from my life like Avril, Crystal, Mallory and
self-respect had.

“No, not really. He’s kind of skinny. Chuck Roast! Surely,
you’ve heard of him. The first American to earn both an M.W. and a Tony Award?”

Of course, I’d heard of Chuck Roast M.W. And, damn, was he
good in “La Cage aux Folles.” He created the character of Blanche. Sort of
dull, but that’s what you’d expect from “Folles” Blanche. But there was
something about Biola Dynamic I didn’t trust. Maybe it was the lisp. It seemed
fake, like the bubbles in Sofia
sparkling wine, or like Obama giving Rush Limbaugh an award—two ways of
introducing gas. But I needed Biola, I needed her to lead me to Avril, and I
needed her to help me find out who was killing M.W. candidates, and why. And I
sure as hell needed a woman to have sex with by Chapter Fifteen, and the
pickin’s were getting slim.

“Is he the guy who wants you to kill Mallory O’Lactic?”

Biola went silent. She turned her back to me, still holding
the photograph of Avril, staring down at it. It sounded like she was weeping. I
took the opportunity to look her up and down. From behind, she reminded me of Napa Valley.
The seams of her black nylons running parallel up her legs like Highway 29 and
the Silverado Trail, smooth and straight most of the way, but then getting
bumpy. Might be the ass fault. Her skirt covered the valley between her lush Spring Mountain
and her slightly more exposed Howell
Mountain, and I knew I’d
happily dedicate a lifetime trying to grasp each of them, until I knew from the
very first whiff their distinct terroir. But the further I went, the more I
could feel the chill of Carneros, and I began to feel guilty for seeing Biola
as just another sexual appellation for me to learn the boundaries, began to
feel that, like the wines of Carneros, I was just another brut dying to be
disgorged.

I walked over to Biola and put my hands on her shoulders.
Her silky smooth hair had the texture of Dehlinger Pinot Noir, and I detected
the slight aroma of her perfume, Savannah-Chanelle No. 5. Pretty cheap crap for
a budding M.W. to wear, I thought.

“Don’t worry, Biola,” I told her, “I’ll help you. I’ll take
care of you.” There he was, that stupid knight in shining armor who showed up
whenever a babe with long legs and a nice set of lung balloons needed
assistance. I snuggled up as close as I could behind Biola, my arms wrapped
around her waist, my body pressed against hers as she continued to quietly sob.
Sometimes the best thing for a gentle crush, I thought, is a bladder press.

David,My wife has been after me to write more of Dial MW for Murder. She finally got to me. Made me worry about Avril Cadavril, my all-time favorite Babe. And, it turns out, I miss this stupid, faux Noir, Voice. These are fun to write, and are very much improvisation.

As for Blinky calling me a bully over at STEVE!, I always simply choose to ignore everything he says. Like everyone else.

Andy,I've always said I have the perfect wife--beautiful, talented, funny, brilliant, sexy, and no taste in men. We were meant to be together.

It's fun to be back writing the HoseMaster Pulp Fiction Classic. I almost began a new one, but I had to work out the Avril Cadavril disappearance or my wife will kill me. Each chapter is fun to write, and I never know the end until I get there. Sort of like life itself.

Ron, glad Blinky's comment didn't faze you.. I thought it was stupid too.. but equally ludicrous was Steve's proclamation the bloggers were jealous of the paid writers, I wrote, ah the jealousy canard.. I once wrote a column aimed at those assholes who go around wrecking parties with their acoustic guitars.. you're jealous if you don't love their musical ability, or complete lack thereof.. No, I'm not jealous, I just don't want to hear your godawful music.. just like I don't want to read ludicrous wine tasting notes about the snow leopard or with just a hint of asparagus, whether paid or not.. PS... can we expect another 8,000 emails in our inbox telling us about how wonderful your novel is??

David,Always best to unsubscribe from the comments. You'll be less jealous of my overwhelming success.

No one's comments faze me. If you dish it out, and I dish it out more than anyone, you have to take it. I've received gigabytes of hate mail in my HoseMaster tenure. To me, and I've said this a million times, it only means I'm doing it right.

Charlie,With any luck, I'll write a chapter a month. Until I get bored with it again. It's a weird piece, and I think it mostly gets tuned out by my readers, but, as I said, when I'm in that voice, it's a helluva good time for me as a writer.

Bungsniffer,Thank you. I hear Mickey Spillane in my head when I write Dial MW. He was, possibly, the worst writer of sex scenes in the history of sex scenes. I haven't read Spillane in 40 years, but I think I'm still scarred from his stuff.

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About Me

After 19 years as a Sommelier in Los Angeles, twice named Sommelier of the Year by the Southern California Restaurant Writers' Association, I moved to Sonoma County to explore the other aspects of the wine business. I've spent, OK wasted, 35 years learning about and teaching about and swallowing wine. I am also a judge at the Sonoma Harvest Fair, San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition--so I can spit like a rabid llama. I know more about wine than David Sedaris and I'm funnier than James Laube. Stay tuned for an informed but jaded view of everything wine and everything else.
I'm living proof that alcohol kills brain cells.

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"I must say you are an idiot. I've never liked you. I have no idea why people find you funny."